UNLV alumna guides next generation of female leaders in creating their own success

By Grace Da Rocha (contact)

Tuesday, April 4, 2023 | 2 a.m.

J ean Munson has had to make a lot of hard decisions in her life, like moving to Las Vegas from Guam in her late teens for college and becoming the first Asian-American woman to open a comic-book publishing company in Nevada.

Navigating her way through it all hasn’t been easy, but that hasn’t held her back.

It’s just part of her personality, Munson says. She’s always maintained a mixture of optimism, friendliness and resiliency that she further developed as an undergraduate student in UNLV’s National Education for Women’s (NEW) Leadership program.

Now, Munson gets to help guide the next generation of female leaders in Nevada in creating their own success stories as a program manager in UNLV’s Women’s Research Institute of Nevada. In that capacity, she runs the NEW Leadership Nevada Program.

“The world is so daunting and scary, especially as a woman (and) as a woman of color — it’s not easy,” Munson said. “But when you see someone who’s done it (and) who’s willing to tell you how — so you can write your own (story) — that’s very powerful, especially in the college setting.”

Munson, a UNLV graduate who majored in history, completed the NEW Leadership program in 2009. She remembers looking up to Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, the former program manager at UNLV’s NEW Leadership branch who now is vice president of policy, partnerships and organizing at the reproductive health group Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based nonprofit.

“I didn’t see a lot of Asian American women at the time (and) it was fascinating to me; I was like, wow, look at Diana Rhodes in this scene, right?” Munson said. “Very few Asian American women are in this leadership scene who have been chosen for this program.”

NEW Leadership was developed in 1991 at Rutgers University. Through mentorship, events and networking, the program educates women on politics and encourages them to take on leadership roles in that area.

UNLV joined the program in 2003 and became the first university west of the Mississippi to host it, according to Munson.

The summer residential program, which lasts six weeks at the beginning of the summer, invites students from across Nevada to attend a series of lectures and activities meant to teach them skills to propel them into leadership careers, said Caryll Dziedziak, director of the Women’s Research Institute of Nevada.

Munson joined the research institute’s staff to run the NEW Leadership program full-time in 2017 after a workplace injury cost her a job managing a bakery. Dziedziak said she hired Munson because of her excellent work as a faculty-in-residence for the summer residential program during a previous program year.

In the past 20 years, the NEW Leadership Nevada program has graduated over 450 students from across the state and boasts local alumni such as Evelyn Garcia Morales, president of the Clark County School Board.

Women are still “significantly underrepresented in leadership,” according to a 2022 study from McKinsey & Company in partnership with LeanIn.org. Women of color are especially underrepresented.

The Women in the Workplace report found last year that just 40.9% of women in the workforce were in managerial positions in 2021, with women of color holding a “drastically smaller share of management positions.” Latinas held 10.9% of these positions and Black women were in 10.2% of these roles, while Asian women held 9% across industries in 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

When Munson first entered the local comic book scene in her mid-20s, she said it was still largely male-dominated and she was often “boxed in” as the “cute Asian girl.” This made getting her work looked at much harder — men often didn’t regard her work seriously or were only attracted to her romantically.

But Munson didn’t let that break her stride toward publishing comics, and she opened her comic book publishing company — Plot Twist Publishing — in 2017.

“That’s how it has been as an Asian American woman — unfortunately, being fetishized is a historical thing, but what is also really great is pushing back on those narratives,” Munson said.

That’s part of why Munson and Dzeidziak have taken the cookie-cutter curriculum from the national NEW Leadership program and added some valuable lessons about self-care, burnout and learning to love your own body.

“It’s not just about getting more women in the boardroom,” Dzeidziak said of the NEW Leadership curriculum. “Another part of it is feeling secure about who you are in your own skin, understanding your strengths, understanding how to navigate in a capricious world, giving (women) these broader life skill sets that whatever they do in life, they’ll be ready to succeed.”

Munson even uses one of her own comics — Stretch Marks, a story of Munson’s journey learning to love her body regardless of her weight — as part of the curriculum for the college students who participate in the program.

It’s especially important for the many first-generation college students who graduate from this program and may not have the guidance at home to navigate schooling or could be saddled with other familial responsibilities on top of building their careers, according to Dzeidziak.

Munson said she had been a part of “a million beautiful success stories.” She doesn’t think there will ever be a time when she’s not helping other women achieve their goals. And she won’t let anything deter her own success, no matter how scary or how much backlash she receives.

“Lean into those experiences, lean into the scary because on the other side, you’re going to build roadmaps where people have traveled less and need a lot of information, and you might be it,” Munson said. “I encourage that for everyone.”